


Sweet Dreams Till the Sun Beams

by historia_vitae_magistras



Series: The tulips make me want... [4]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Beaches, Hurt/Comfort, Jazz - Freeform, M/M, Slow Dancing, but more than usual, buttfucking and feels, to 1953 jazz, warning: im a goddamn sap, you know the drill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-24 00:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13800054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historia_vitae_magistras/pseuds/historia_vitae_magistras
Summary: “And now look at you,” Johan kissed Matt’s forehead. “You know, Canada would be known worldwide as the most beautiful country on earth if it were up to the Dutch,”One shot. Complete.





	Sweet Dreams Till the Sun Beams

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paarsetulpen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paarsetulpen/gifts).



#####  **  
**  
  
  
  
  
Aruba, 1980 

He falls asleep easily in the heat, dozing off in the passenger’s seat of Johan’s rented jeep before they’re out of the city. He gets a glimpse of Dutch gables in tropical pastels and beaches. And god don’t the beaches look spectacular.

Through the divi-divi and palm trees sloping southwest with the dry, warm breeze, he sees short bursts of sunlight. It’s streaming through the shady places, every little sand particle on the blonde beaches reflecting the impossible sunlight. Matt drops his shades, leans back, lets the jazz music burbling off the radio take him away.

He awakens to Johan’s smiling face. His severe features are soft like they have melted in the heat. Matt rubs his arms, shedding the last goosebumps of the Canadian winter as Johan tells him they’ve arrived. It’s a beachside villa like something off a postcard, complete with a terracotta roof and whitewashed walls.

The sky above him is untroubled, the same colour as the clear water where the two meet beyond Johan’s shoulders, the creamy aquamarine waves as placid as if they were contained in a fruit bowl rather than the Atlantic.

Matt can hardly believe this is the same body of water at the end of the St. Lawrence. Here it is blue and serene; at his own Montreal doorstep it churns grey and troubled. Not unlike him, he notes his appearance in the mirror by the door as they cross through. Quebec’s anger always shows in the bags under his eyes.

Johan takes care of the bags and groceries after he pressed Matt into a deck chair by the tile pool that feeds right into the sea. Matt can’t tell where the pool water ends and the wild begins and he’s still trying to figure it out when he falls asleep, sheltered from the sun by the massive green thatched canopy. This time, his sleep is quiet and when he awakens, it actually feels as if he’s slept.

He takes his time waking up, first aware that the world is less viciously bright than before; the shadows are longer. He’s covered in a light netted blanket he hadn’t fallen asleep with and, by the way it is awkwardly placed, Johan must have tossed it on him and taken his glasses. Matt’s heart warms. He rolls over, away from the house and towards the pool and beach. There, Johan is sitting on the edge of the pool, his feet in the water and his chest bare to the sky.

“Hey there, sleepyhead,” Johan said, as serene as the cove.

“Hey,” Matt said, voice raspy.

“Slept decently, then?” Johan’s smile is soft and he stands, long sinuous lines of his body rising, wavering like the distortion of air over fire as Matt took his time, wiggling on the deck chair. He’s got sleep lines on his hands and probably on his face. Distantly, he knows he’s probably thirsty, but he’s warm and rested and in no hurry to wake up.

“Mhmm,” Matt hums, still not exactly alert. Johan makes quick work of a cooler and pops the tops off two familiar green beers.

“Here,” Johan hands him one along with his glasses. Matt is still getting there, just taking his sweet French time but Johan is all efficiency, sitting him up. Vacation means maximum time made for enjoyable activities. He’d once told Matt as much. For his part, Matt takes his vacations less seriously. But lazing in the sand with plenty of beer is about as good as life gets.

“Drink up,”

“Thanks,” Matt takes the bottle from him, sips cautiously. He’s had some interesting tropical liquors over the years and has been fond of few of them. But this is light, familiar, if not exactly great. His eyebrow rise above his glasses at Johan. “Heineken?”

“There are certain perks to overseas territories,” Johan smirks. Matt grins at him, downs the rest of his beer. They are quiet, Matt still laying down and Johan standing tall, a golden shadow against a red horizon. He’s wearing only swim trunks and there’s a towel folded neatly by the water. Like he’s about to swim.

The twisted scars from the winter flooding of nineteen-fifty-three run in jagged loops around his knee, and there are more from flooding and wars older on his back, even older than Matthew. But that very same back is unbent. His jaw is strong. There is time enough for swimming tomorrow, Matt decides.

“Come here,” he says and Johan does as he is bid. They’re tight and wanting everywhere. Matt kisses him. Then his eyes, his cheeks, his chest and his belly, follows the hard lines of his hips and the faint blonde hair that led from his naval down to where his cock was hard and still ready against his thigh.

Matt’s woodworker's hands take firm grip of Johan’s swimmers ass, pull him up and Matt kneels on the smooth concrete of the poolside and takes him in his mouth, tongues and twists until Johan can’t bear it. He flips Matt face down, onto his belly, fumbles in the beach towel.

“Please tell me that isn’t sunblock—” Matt groaned.

“Coconut oil,” Johan said.

Matt grunts, looks up from the side, his eyes hold Johan’s steady, and then he nods and opens himself up. It’ll do. Johan is careful and efficient in his foreplay, kissing his shoulder blades and thighs before he enters. Matt is only half aware of rocking and shots of pleasure and Johan moves in deeper; frantic and frenzied.

Johan asks permission to go further and Matt lets him, thinking of ships and of seas, the ship riding the waves and the sea giving way. Johan the master sailor: Matt will let him go where he will, do what he wishes. There is more trust than sensation for a moment and Johan will not be stopped by anything more than the physical limitations of mankind.

When Johan can thrust no deeper, drive no further, when he has touched thise deepest parts, Matt drowns in the sensation closing over his head and drags him down into the depths. Johan collapses against him, slick with sweat. When breath starts to come easier and he turns over again, he sees Johan, eyes still clouded, still fighting with the knot that had just eased in Matt. Face up, watching him finish is watching him come alive, the gold lines of his body glowing like stained glass as the sun came down behind him, setting the water on fire. Matthew does his best work in the dark, French as he is, but this will do nicely. They come together as the sun disappears, plunged into the waters of the warm sea.

After a long while, Johan extricates himself from Matthew’s vice-cuddle first. Matt moans, tries to hold him closer. But he only laughs and tosses the light knit blanket over him, boneless and satiated. He grumbles, pissy as Johan first disappears into the house and then re-emerges with a big wire fire basket full of hardwood and a grocery bag.

“Sure, complain about me feeding you,” Johan gave him a false-annoyed look that he couldn’t help from breaking into a smile.

Matt is alert now. Well about as alert as he gets without a bucket of coffee. “Food?” He sits up.  

“Food,” Johan hims in the affirmative.

“Do you want help?” Matt rolls over, props himself up.

“That’s alright,” Johan said. “You look like you could use the rest,”

Matt watches him work. The weave of the wire fire basket is too porous, can’t hold a proper amount of kindling without sifting it through the grate. Matt watches him dumps lighter fluid everywhere, face a closed fist of frustration, and there’s a spectacular burst of flame when it lights, but none of the wood has time to catch. Matt laughs at him, gets up and nudges him over, feeling merciful.

“Been awhile since you lit a fire, old man?” He teases, gently, but Johan still scowls. Matt kisses it away, and ends up lighting a fire with Johan’s weight behind him and hard kisses burning away his neck. He has to get up and shove Johan off to the shower before he can get any work done. But by the time Johan’s emerged, his hair only half-heartedly pushed back and in clean clothes, Matt has stolen smooth stones from the tide pools to line the basket so his kindling will stay put. They sit down again, fitted together like wave crests. Johan kisses places much further south as Matt props up the logs on a wedge so when one burns away, the next will take its place.

“Survival skills are hot, eh?” Matt laughs.  
  
“Almost as sexy as your GDP per capita,” Johan says. Joking, but only half sarcastic. He nuzzles Matt’s neck and Matt snorts, turning to nip a kiss into Johan’s skin.

“That has to burn down a bit…” Matt grins, shifting back, planting his weight firmly on his knees and pulling the ties of Johan’s shorts free with his teeth. He bites kisses everywhere, holds Johan’s thighs down and apart, slowly teases his way up and in around his hips until he reaches his thighs.

“I don’t think the fish will spoil— Jesus Christ, Matt!”

 

* * *

 

The sun is nearly drowned in the sea when Matt is awoken again by Johan finally rolling out from under him. Matt watches sleepily as he gets up and finds his sea legs. Watches lazily as Johan skewered the lionfish fillets on bamboo shafts and hung them between the edges of the basket to roast, only occasionally licked by Matt’s golden fire. He looks on, not completely awake as Johan sits and watches the sunset, thinking Matt is still asleep. His hair isn’t anything like spiked now, between the shower water and Matt’s ministrations having left him sweaty. But as the sun sets and he cools down and Matt’s state of awareness is sleepy at best, he scoots closer and steals a corner of the loose knit blanket to pull over his own shoulders. Shared warmth and the smell of salt and sweat and want woke him properly. It takes awhile, but as the sun retreats, he rises, inching closer and wrapping himself around Johan tighter, waiting for their dinner to cook.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever seen stars like this,” Matt said. They rise directly perpendicular to the horizon, in straight streaky lines across the night. He can see familiar constellations after a while, as he tilts his head and squints.

Ned nodded solemnly. “I miss them, sometimes,”

Matt hums. Normally he might tense at a positive reference to Johan’s old empire, but sometimes, at his worst, he understands the urge to be elsewhere than home, and to have a piece of it belong to you. His father, Johan, even Papa. They have pieces of the world far-flung from home that still belong to them, that are pieces of their existence. Empires have colonies. But the colonies themselves? They only have their cemeteries. He shifts, shoves his hair violently out of his face, shakes off the thought. Johan kisses his shoulder, draws him in closer.  

“The stars were all we used to have, y’know,” Johan says. “To tell stories,”

“I _do_ remember a world without radio and TV,” Matt points out to him.

“True but,” he shakes his head. “You don’t remember the world without the printing press. When we looked up at night? This was all we had. God-given illustrations to our own stories. We’d have to look up and recall what we remembered our fathers had told us. For those of us who had fathers.” He nudges Matt in the shoulder.

Matt turns over and takes Johan with him so it was Matt’s legs straddling Johan and Matt’s younger knees on the hard concrete, “Oh, Dear Lord Father was never much one for spewing advice to his children, but,” He nips a hard kiss into Johan's collarbone. “Papa’s people left me with at least something of an education,” His hands spread across Johan again, across a bronzed chest and strong arms, Matt’s fingers slipped behind his back, down the scars and rippling muscle.

Johan has shed the shame of those scars long, long ago and he rises, cock hard against Matt’s thigh. Matt is about to untie his shorts again when he turns around.

“Dinner will burn,”

“Tabarnak,” Matt swears, leans back on his knuckles, still straddling Johan. “Not even time for a quickie?”

Johan laughs, gestures to the fish, golden and flaky on their skewers, shakes his head. “They’re ready,”

Matt frowns, torn between dinner roasting golden brown, flecked with chilies, and Johan’s golden span of body flecked with scars. So, so very tempting, both of them. In the end, his stomach decides for him. Johan laughs, leaving the circle of Matt’s arms and rolling the lionfish into wraps full of tomatoes, lettuce, slaw and sauce.

Matt accepts his, downs three of them before Johan is finished with his first. He groans and lays back with pleasure.

“I figure 5 apiece should feed us,” Johan says, banking the cooking fire with a long piece of driftwood.

He does the math quickly,  “If you’re only planning on eating two,”

“Jesus Christ,” Johan looks startled, his brows shooting high. “Did you not eat before we got on the plane? I swear I saw you eat before we got on the plane,”

“I did,” Matt shrugs.

Johan levels him with the best of his deadpan face. The closed up one that asks: “Are you fucking with me right now?”

“We said no business talk,” Matt says.

“No, _you_ said no business talk. We are here because I had business to take care of,”

Matt shrugs and his face falls. “I’m growing again, I think,” Centuries old and still having growing pains. He’ll be proud of his new height when it's over, but every day, it means more and more of Quebec outnumbered. The taller her gets, the further away his roots. He folds himself up, makes himself small, pulling his thighs to his chest, his heels to his ass and resting his chin on his knees. He considers putting down the wrap, but decides against it.

“How can you still be growing?” Johan says incredulously.

“They struck oil in Alberta again,” Matt shrugs again. “I’ve never exactly been sure why it happens. When they add territory to me, it’s like what humans feel. That’s normal growth for us I think. But when the economic booms happens, all I want to do is sleep and eat and _eat_ ,”

“I can tell,” Johan says, knocking him with a playful elbow. “You should have just said something,”

“I’m 400 years old,” Matt said. “You’d think I’d be past this stage by now,”

“Nah,” Johan says. He takes a bite, looked thoughtful. “I was growing until I was at least 600 and something,”

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. Industrialization was a pain,” He rubs at his knee and lays back, stretching himself out like a lizard on the sand. “New industries?”  

“Oil, computers, booming service industry...” Matt shrugs. “Probably the oil,”

“Makes sense,”

“It gets people moving and industry grooving',” Matt says. They rhyme in his accent. Johan smiles.

“Half your GDP goes to just feeding you, doesn’t it?”

Matt swallows and grins.  “A quarter, max,”

“Jesus,” Johan shook his head,

“You think this is bad? Should have seen me during the war. I was eating everything in sight when they’d let me off the line.”

“Matt,” Johan’s brow lowered pensively.

Matt swallowed before he answered. “What?”

“You fed me for months straight on just your rations,”

“So?”

“And you were like _this_?”

Matt dismisses him with a one-shouldered shrug. He takes a second and a third wrap from Johan who stares at him like he’s grown a second head.

“What?”

“Nothing… Just… You’re really something, you know?”

A raised brow asked ‘What?' for him, since Matt's mouth is full. Johan sighs, sat down with the rest of the wraps stacked on a plate next to him. Johan takes a swig of beer and traces one gentle hand along Matt’s pinched brow.

“That,” he says, kissing his hairline.

“What?”

“You just don’t even think about it,”

Matt frowns, felt self-conscious all of a sudden. He shrugs. “You were starving, I was just… it's just logic. You needed it more than me, and it’s not like Ludwig was going to do it,”

“That's… generally not how we think,”

Matt’s head dips. He stares at the ground between his knees. “I know,” His breath hitches. He’s watched empires at work. He knows, he _knows_ how they are supposed to be. How they are supposed to behave in their own self interest. He has watched his brother struggle between being a good man and a great nation.

“Matt?” Johan asks. Looks like he wants to touch him, but isn't sure if he should.

“I know!” he says. “I know it’s not how we’re supposed to be. But I wasn’t one of you for… centuries! I belonged to another for so long. I couldn’t choose how we are, or how Canada is. But I can choose how _I am_ ,”

“Matt…”

“And I will always choose what’s right when I can,”  

Johan’s face collapses into something like sorrow. Matt reaches for him. There is a moment of horrible silence and even after 35 years, Matt still feels the doubt that this may be pity. A one-sided love affair Johan only being returned as a debt to be paid. He knows it’s not true, he does. But—

“You know I love you,” Johan says suddenly, urgently, and very, very quietly.

“I know,” Matt says.

“Do you?” Johan asks, and if his grip around Matt gets any tighter, his head might pop off with the assurance of it. “I never say it,”

“I know you love me,” Matt says. A strange thing, him assuring Johan of his own assurance when sometimes the doubt is an iron fist around his heart.

“Good,” Johan whispers. “Because I do. So much,”

They’re drunk. They’re definitely drunk. Dinner has disappeared and the empty bottles have multiplied. Too serious, too close to feelings. Feelings deep and moving and impossibly good— feelings that if he has them, and they disappear, he won’t be able to live without them again. He turns over, shakes himself out, decides on a comment to deflect.

“You took me on vacation on your own dime. If that isn’t Dutch love then what is it?” He grinned, wolfed down most of another wrap.  

Johan frowns. “I’m not _that_ cheap,”

“Yeah, you kind’ve are,” Matt laughs around another lionfish wrap. His efforts to lighten things up fail miserably. Johan crawls after him around the fire and fits them together again like there is no other way for them to sit.

“Well, I’m glad you know,” he says, and rests his chin on Matt’s shoulder. “During the occupation, I thought of you sometimes. How hard you had fought as the Germans came through. How hard you had fought for Ypres for my sister in the war before that. How Ludwig didn’t fear me, Arthur, Francis or your brother, but he feared you,”

“There were… a few incidents…” Matt said distantly, willing himself to stay in this moment, not to throw himself back to the first Ypres, the second Ypres, the third Ypres. Always fucking Ypres but then Vimy, Passchendaele, Arras. Aruba now, not Arras. He tenses, Johan just holds him, rubs away the goosebumps.

“I’ve heard,” Johan says. “And I was glad it was you who came screaming through Europe for us,”

“I wasn’t alone,” Matt said hastily, trying to shirk the praise.

“No, but you, who has always had the least to give, gave me the most,” Johan says. “I didn’t know that when you came for me, you know? You came, and I thought, ‘will he be Arthur’s or Francis’? Whose son will he be?’ And then you appeared on the horizon and you were neither. You were your own man. You _are_ your own man. And we owed our lives and our children’s lives to you, who was neither Arthur or Francis nor any empire. Just… Matt.”

“I was ordered to do that, you know,”

“You do far more than you’re told. God, Matt, do you even realize what a miracle you are?”

“Lucky New World,” Matt says, gives him another one-shouldered shrug.

“Yes, but when you came, you did all you did. And then not only were you kind, you were somehow taller than me _and_ the most beautiful country in the world,”

“Kiss-ass,” Matt snorts.

Johan flicks his hip. “Don’t tempt me,”

“Feel free, at any time,”

“You are _insatiable_ ,” Johan groans like he's really complaining, but his face is open and light.

Matt spreads out his legs, enjoys the grit of the still-warm sand against them, and leans in so more of his skin will touch Johan’s. “Not my fault you’re old and can’t keep up,”

“Shithead. See,” he waves a hand, gesturing to the space that they occupy.  

“See what?”

“How much there is to love,”

“Yeah. You have officially had _way_ too much Heineken,” Matt tries to laugh but Johan laces their hands together.

“I love you so much,”

“Yeah, the Dutch-Canadian special relationship at its finest,” Matt laughs nervously. Johan doesn't do bombastic statements.

“No, not Canada,” Johan said. “You, Matthew, just you,”

“I _am_ Canada,”

“And I am the Netherlands. But I am Johan and you are Matt too. And I do, I do love Canada. Every square inch of your ridiculously cold, ridiculously oversized country. But I didn’t fall in love with Quebec or Ontario or whatever the hell you call that one, Sass-kat-o-land? I fell in love with you, Matt. All of you. The choices you make as a man separate of your politics. The man who gave me his coat and all his supplies and then went and continued killing Nazi’s half naked and on an empty stomach without being ordered to. Without even thinking about it. I love you for that, so, so fucking much,”

“Johan…” Matt says. “We are so beyond gone,”

“So?” Johan says. “I love you sober too. It's just easier to say with the good shit,” Matt takes his word; they stay squeezed together. “When things get rough between what Francis left behind and what Arthur expects from you, I love you even more. How fucking strong your grip must be to keep those two things squeezed together and functioning,”

“Heh,” Matt snorts. “I guess I got it from somewhere. Dad probably, the old bastard,”

“No,” Johan says. “That’s not anything of your parents. Just yourself. I will never pity a child with two parents, but you are so, so much better than your fathers.”

“They made what I am,”

“No,” says Johan. “They gave you things, yes, but you made those things into what you are,” He looks out at the water; Matt follows his gaze and recognizes something forlorn there. Like the way Matt looked at broad sides of Paris sometimes. A city that had once been, in theory, his capital.

“Do you remember anything of your parents?”

Johan shook his head. “Not really. Germania had a lot of sons, if he existed. But it might have been nice, I think, to have a father. A mother.”

Matt snorted. “Maybe one,”

“At least you always know where you come from,” Johan says, not looking at him, but out at where the waves lap placidly at the shore. The air is thick and warm with its salt and humidity. Matt’s hair, ever curly, sticks to his neck in tight spirals.

“You know where you came from,” Matt says. “You’ve told me before.‘The sea is my mother, she shall not hurt me’ even as I was still paddling to get us out of the goddamn water in time before she turned over the boat. Remember ‘53?”

“The sea is my mother and the ship my father,” he nods.

Matt stares at the sky. “You know, for all its England with the navy, it was Papa who taught me the stars. And you. You learned them on the ship?”

“Yes.”

“Not so different, ships and fathers. Teach you useful things but you’re forever at their whims,” Matt says ruefully.

“That they do, I suppose. The stars, for they are a wonder, private needle-holes of light in the stygian diorama. It means—”

“I know what it means,” Matt says quietly. “I had Latin,”

“Oh,”

“You know, most of my education in the early days came from the priests,” he offers by way of explanation. Rarely does he mention those early violent years to anyone. He raises a hand, follows the path of the Milky Way with his first finger.  “Man's tiny view into the realm of the dead. Each star like a keyhole view into a forbidden room,”

He stared up. “I don’t think I’d have gotten through the World Wars if they’d sent me somewhere with different constellations,”

“You would have,” Johan shifts, laced his hand through Matt’s. “Millions of people were counting on you,”

“Maybe,”

“No,” he says, firmly. “We were. Tens of millions of people owe their lives to you and yours,” He snakes his arm around Matt and they stare up at the night sky together.  

* * *

 

 

Two days later, Johan sets to work at the table, a large accounting calculator, notepads and pens spread every which way. Matt lays naked on the terrace, beyond his pool of work light, steadily working through Johan's stash of beer.

He's the floating, content kind of drunk. Heavy limbed, still warm from the long day in the sun like a beach stone. Warm like a beach stone he'd want to curl up and go to sleep on. Time slips through his fingers, a moment is a lifetime and a lifetime a moment.

But either way the rising silver moon and the dazzle of stars is bizarrely bright. Maybe it's the lack of blinding solar flares and the resulting nightly Aurora Borealis. The sight is spectacular, the stars rising nearly perpendicular to the horizon. Quebec rising perpendicular against all of Canada.

Quebecois versus the world.

His stomach sours. He slides out of the deck chair. Even at night, the breeze is warm and dry. He'd  abandoned his  clothes hours ago.

Ass bare to the sea he kneels and leans in, hands firm and promising on Johan's thighs. He needs a distraction or he might cry, the noise in his brain is too much, too hard to ignore. He needs to be pulled into his body, away from his nationhood. But Johan doesn't look up from his math.

“Not now. I'm busy,"

“Yes, now,” Matt lifts his polo and tugs at the belt holding up his Bermudas. Too many clothes for this heat. He nips a kiss at his navel, squeezes at the firm rower's abs. Promising at the very least the best blow job of the decade if not the century.

Johan frowns. “I'm serious."

“Fine,” Matt withdraws without another word. He might be the only damn French speaking country on the face of the Earth anyone could ever said no to. Somehow, he doubts anyone has ever denied his Papa. Something must have shown on his face because Johan clears his throat and shakes his head apologetically.

“I'm sorry, I just have to finish this up before the Queen's visit tomorrow,”

Matthew stares at him, piqued and more than a little frustrated. But he sighs. “I could help? If it means we get to the vacation part of our vacation faster,” He offers. The night together just days before had some promise of newness to it. Like things could be different—better. How this, what they have between them, can be better—that Matt didn’t know. But it can be better than being fucking ignored. He’s drunk, carved in half, and emotional.

“So how much do you know about extradition treaties and salt pans in the Caribbean?” Johan sits back, the flippant spikes of his hair wavering with the motion.

Matt says nothing, only crosses his arms. It’s rare he doesn’t know something that someone would assume he wouldn’t know. Rare, and he fucking hates when it happens. Johan sees it in his face again and back pedals.

“Look. It's not like I don't appreciate the offer but," he sighs. "Matt, how much do you really know about running an overseas territory?”

“Right, yes, what _would_ the eternal colony know about being ruled by an old empire or two?” Matt snarls.

"That's not what its about and you know it,”

“Uh-huh,” Matt rolls his eyes. “Sure it's not."

“Did you just...?” Johan stares him up and down, sighs and turns back to his paperwork, shaking his head. “Christ. You're behaving like a child,”

“Yep, that's me,” he mutters. “The 400 year old child—until someone needs lumber or cannon fodder because he can't be fucked to liberate himself,”

Johan nods, like he heard, but his head is already in his accounts. Matt's heart sinks at this stupid, familiar feeling. His words passing in one ear and out the other; not worth the time it would take for them to register. Suddenly cold and impossibly alone, he steps into the villa and heads for the guest room.

Johan can sleep alone if his presence is too inefficient. Hot, unhappy and restless, he tosses and turns and twists the sheets all around himself all night. He’ll make things right in the morning, he tells himself. In the morning, everything will be fine.

 

* * *

 

But it isn’t fine in the morning. When Matt goes to make peace, Johan and his Jeep are both gone. There’s still-warm coffee in the pot, breakfast in the fridge with a note that he will back after he’s gotten some work done, and Matt is alone. Suddenly he can’t stand the stillness. He leaves breakfast in the fridge and put on shorts and running shoes and shoots out of the door, over the crossover and beyond the pool to the beach.

The morning mist is lifting. Seabirds skim the shallows for their breakfast. They fly west over his head as he runs into the sunrise; across the firm, damp sand where the waves have stretched their farthest and wait for the tide to recede. He runs, kicking up sand with each step. It pelts his calves and soon he's speeding along in steps matching the waves.

Running, breathing, running. The no-room-for-thinking race that shut out his emotions and his people and deep thought. It was the purest form of running the fuck away from his problems.

Endorphins, the sunrise, the warm morning sun, whatever it may be, he feels good. And then the waves change, start to lap at his ankles suddenly they tear the sand out from under his feet.

He sprawls, shots twisted and knocking the breath out of him when all he wants is to fucking yell. He wanted to yell and throw a fucking fit, kick sand and scream until his head is clear. ‘A French fit,’ Arthur would call it, rolling his eyes and muttering about dramatics because of _course_ expressing human emotion would be mere dramatics to him. Maybe it't just not bloody cold enough in England to make Arthur need a temper to feel warm again, but fuck— Matt does. He needs to be human. He gets up. He gets up because he always does, even though he doesn't want to. He wants to lay there and howl.

But sure enough, he makes his way back to the villa, walking slow, suddenly tired and hungry, one hand in his hair, jaggedly spasming into a fist at the nap of his neck. He picks at the cold toast smothered in edam and lies on a beach chair, tired and uncomfortable and pissed off.

Johan may be the son of the sea, but Matt is no fucking stranger to her. She is a constant, her embrace cold on all three sides of him that Alfred does not hug. Arthur took him from Francis for exactly that reason; to give Alfred a brother to stand back to back with against an unforgiving world. Matt was bought just for that. It was supposed to be them against the world, always. But Alfred had spat Arthur’s gift in his face. He wanted independence; something Matt couldn't give.

In the end, they had all decided Matt wasn't worth keeping. But the sea? She never changed her mind, had never reappraised his worth. She was constant. She didn’t change. The sand might shift with wind or wave, but nothing really vanished; it just rearranged itself. Matt ties up his hair, slips out of his shorts and sinks into the water, did laps, walking against the tide.

The foaming water churns against his legs and rushes out again, forcing the sand from under and around his feet. He loses his footing and stumbles around, trying not to fall. He fails, but makes it to his feet again. The fight with nature matches his mood perfectly fine.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s still in a foul fucking mood when the sun begins to set. Pulled in two, now shoved against a wall by Johan’s odd dismissals. He's hiked the sand all afternoon and he’s starving and sullen and sore and horribly sober in the warm water when Johan finds him floating along the edge.

“Hey,” Johan says by way of greeting. He’s dressed in a suit, the jacket draped over one arm, a case of beer and a brown paper bag of what Matt hopes might be groceries in the other. His tie is loose and his shirtsleeves are rolled to his elbows.

He looks as hot and hungry and tired as Matt feels. In a childish moment of anger, Matt wants to ignore him, throw any attention given in his face with a cold shoulder. But he’s never been able to ignore any rare attention, much less Johan’s.

“Hey,” he returns quietly.

Johan looks uncertain, but his face steels and he sets down the food next to Matt. “Can we… can we talk?”

Matt doesn’t look at him, but eyes the beer. He tries to do the math. How many beers are needed before forgiveness is granted? He doesn’t know but according to Arthur it only takes a bottle of wine to get his Papa ass up so… he sighs. Sometimes he didn’t like it, sometimes he wanted to be as petty as the old world, but mostly he does want to do better, to be better to Johan than the old world could be.

He nods at the beer. “You can get me drunk. And then maybe we can talk,”

Johan smiled tiredly at that, pushes the goods towards him. “Here. Beer,”

“Molson? Jesus fuck how much did that cost down here?”

“More than I usually spend on beer in a month,” Johan cringes unhappily. “But hopefully enough that you're not pissed at me?”  

Matt takes one, says nothing, upends it because Holy Mother, when is he ever _angry_? Bitter? Maybe. Disappointed? Sad? Lonely? More than he would like to admit. But rarely, rarely angry. Quebecois fury has never suited him.

“I’m sorry,” says Johan. Matt looks at him, long and hard. Yes. He looks sorry. Sorry and tired, even the spikes of his hair looking limp on his head. “...for what it’s worth.”

“It’s worth a lot!” Matt blurts. No one has ever apologized to him. He is loved, he is thought of, but rarely, rarely is it assumed he's ever in need of an apology.

“Yeah?” Johan asks, looking weary.

“Yeah,” he nods. “Yeah it is,”

“You… deserve better than just that,” Johan sidles up next to him, gives a look like he's asking permission to touch again. Matt thinks about it. Thinks about how usually, he associates cold with winter and home. But this sandy bit of paradise without Johan has been almost as chilly. He raises an arm and Johan fits himself next to Matt on the couch. Just where he belongs.

 

* * *

 

 

The next days are easier. Still tense, but easier. They haven’t had sex since that night and Matt keeps turning away from anything more than sitting next to each other, but its normal enough. Johan possesses far more energy than was legal for 6 am in the morning and wakes them both early, shoving coffee and bread down for breakfast before they get going, Matt  paddling furiously after him and his wakeboard.

They spend most of the day swirling around each other in the water, Matt dodging Johan’s every touch but following after him. The day is hotter than the others have been and he’s tired, but Johan has showed no signs of wanting to retreat to the shade and there’s been no mention of water, so Matt follows suit.

Johan is the better swimmer, his body straight and strong and streaming through the waves like an arrow through the air. Matt can’t keep up in sheer speed, not when he’s both broader and blinder than Johan, out here without his glasses and his contacts left behind in the villa.

Johan monologues about the fish swimming around their feet, occasionally nibbling at Matt’s toes. Their individual features are pointed out, but Matt can’t see a goddamn detail. He’s trying to explain as much when Johan stopped cold, stared at him.

“Are you in the mood for French?”

“Quoi?”

“You switched, Matt,”

“Non—” He snaps his mouth shut. Eyes huge and panicked, he hugs the wakeboard.

“Yes,” Johan raises a concerned, confused eyebrow.  “You did,”

“Tabarnak, I did,” Matt sighs. And again, he thinks the word ‘fuck,’ in English, wills them to come out as English, but instead, it's the goddamn Tabarnak all over again.  

“Just switch back,” Johan says. Like it's that fucking easy. Like any of this is that fucking easy.

“Okay. How’s that?”

“Still French,”

“Tabarnak,"

“Maybe we should get out of the sun…” Johan sinks into the water, off the board and begins to paddle them towards shore.

“It’s all right,” he tries to say. But it doesn’t come out correctly.

“Still French,” Johan nods solemnly and decides to kick harder. “And you… don’t look good,”

“I’m fine,” Matt insists, trying to piece together why his thoughts weren’t coming in actual words, but in fragments of French.

“Right, you’re fine,” He shakes his head, like he didn’t want to start an argument. “Well in that case, I want to get out of the sun. We’ve been drinking beer and swimming for two days. Some water and shade would do us some good,”

“Alright,”

“French again. Just… take it easy,”

“Why? Its fine,”

“You’re telling me it's fine that you can’t speak English right now? When your country is in the middle of splitting itself in two? Really?”

“Yes? No? I don't know! I don't know anything about how this works. I was born French, but it’s mostly English now and sometimes I can’t tell the difference but lately I can and Christ—”

“Still French,” Johan says gently. “Why haven’t you asked me about it?”

“Why the hell would I ask you? You’ve got what, a two percent German population as a minority? How the hell would you know?”

Johan pale brows lifted, piqued. “My sister happens to be Belgium. As in, the kingdom of getting nothing done because her two halves never agree. And if it’s getting bad for you, we don’t want to be out here,” Johan looks worried, crossing the wave board.

“It’s fine, really,” Matt pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m alright,”

“Right well, in that case I think I'll just dump you in bed and feed you for fun before I fuck you senseless—if you don’t mind,”

“Sounds fine,” Matt says dimly. He's tired and sore for some reason and Johan’s voice is far away. It’s impossibly bright out here still. The day had come in like the Archangel Joshua, with ramshorn blasts of sun in his face. The sea is as serene and blue as she ever is, but the sun is a miserable thing. The sun that sits high and merciless above ruined, salted fields. Ruined and salted, the way he feels now. Much warmer and cracked than the pink heights of his joints would have lead him to believe.

“Matt?” He hears his name, but there’s only the sun, brutal and ceaseless above him. Johan is calling him, but he’s drowned out by rushing water. Drowned. He— There’s no water then, he doesn’t feel it closing over his head.

There’s only a slick spurt of pain, in his head; jagged rounds of agony cutting his skull in half. Shocked and stunned, he doesn’t cry out. Silvery bubbles shoot out of his trunks and rush past his face towards the surface as he sank.

He begins to fight. He' strong; an even a strong swimmer. The water is crystal clear but the pain, the pain, blooms through his head like jagged steel sawing temple to temple. He's blindsided, stunned, and sluggish and week and he's sinking. Sinking, sinking.

His fingers brush against the dark, slick streamers of seaweed and algae. The descent is agonizingly slow, and as his lungs threaten to burst and dark spots exploded across his vision, he falters.

Suddenly he's thrust upward. Nails bite into his shoulders and he's moving again. His face breaks the surface. He has time for the briefest gulp of air before the water closes over his face, but it is enough. He's pushed upwards once more and this time, when he gropes for support, he finds his outstretched hand seized. Something warm, hard and mercifully solid.

Coughing, he's tossed upwards and slaps against the wave board. He's suddenly cold. Not as nearly has bad as some cold he’s known, shaking nonetheless. Johan is right behind him. Not out of the water yet but holding his hand.

“You’re okay—” he sputters. “You’re okay, just stay still,”

Matt says something but he doesn't understand what it means. The wind is picking up, dragging across his skin like rope burns. The waves are choppier and he wants to vomit watching them coming at them like rank after rank of emulsifying infantry. Like it's Juno Beach in ‘44 all over again.

“Just hang on until we get to the beach, alright? Just relax. You’re okay,”

“Jan—”

“You’re fine, its fine,” He hears Johan’s feet beating against the waves, beating them towards safety.

Johan hauls them to shore, half carries Matt into the villa. Outside a storm is thrashing, lightning splitting the sky. They’ve barely made it in. Matt clings to the doorframe by his fingernails, watches the night sky implode and the sun drown. Johan throws him a towel, but it falls to the floor, Matt is entranced.

He’s calling him again, but Matt doesn’t answer. Nothing makes any sense. There’s only pain and a crack in his skull like the world splitting in two. Johan sees, a fucking miracle, because no one ever sees and he towels him off, shoves his trunks to the floor, and somehow wrangles him into a shirt and shorts before he’s he shoves Matt onto the couch. A blanket catches the wind and billows like a sail as it falls over him.

“Like a ship,” he mutters. He can’t help but think about great wooden ships and fleur-de-lis and bundles of fur and barrels and barrels of wine. The stone buildings and narrow streets of his heart. His first home. Sometimes he thinks he’s strong.

A great northern oak, steady and sturdy and strong. But there’s not a soul that can split the heart from an oak and expect it to live. He won’t live if he loses Quebec. He won’t live and there will be nothing but the pain in his head.

Johan fixes him a bizarre look, unsure. A look that Matt’s not sure he’s seen on him before. But it's gone a moment later and Johan is shoving pills and water at him. The pills go down easy and he upends the water and oh… that does feel better. Johan shoves another glass at him and disappears, leaving him with orders to drink. He returns before the waters gone, his arms full of the bed’s pillows cushions and sheets. Matt tries to stand, but Johan pushes him back down, smooths his hair back.

“I’ve got it,” he says gently. He builds Matt something like a pillow fort, padding out the world and making it soft. Matt disappears into it, curls up and lets the world fade away. He doesn’t give a shit about anything but making the split in his brain go the fuck away. Johan lets him lay there, and watches, makes him drink water, makes sure he stays in one piece. Matt sinks and sinks away, almost out of his body and it’s like Johan never plucked him from the water.

He’s not sure how much later it is when Johan climbs in next to him.

“Jan?” Matt slurred. “The fuck are you doing?”

“Can’t just sit there and let you suffer,” Johan said. “Ice,”

Something cold and slick and heavenly appeared at the base of his neck and a bit of the ache recedes. He moans. Its like breaking the surface in the water again. Ice like oxygen. He almost smiles. Fucking ice. That's about as Canadian as it gets.

“Better?”

He nods sluggishly.

“There you go, you’re okay,” Johan says and reached up with warm hands and around the ice, begins to work out the knots and stiff muscles there. Strong, steady, sturdy hands kneading gently at the based of his neck and Matt settles. Lets Johan trick his muscles into believing they're loose and warm until he falls asleep. “You’re all right,” is the last thing Matt hears before he finds a warm place on the shore in Johan’s firm grasp and lets the waves of sleep wash him out to sea.  

He wakes very slowly the next day, firmly trapped in his warm padded nest  on the couch. The pains gone, but he’s oddly hollow and sick to his stomach. Johan just feeds him more water and pills and holds him, plays with his hair. He says nothing, waits for Matt to say something. It takes a while, he’s weak and washed out, too warm where he’s sunburned and shivery everywhere else. Johan takes it in stride, just holds him fast. He lays there for most of the day, sleeping some, drinking water but mostly just terrified of what language will come out of his mouth when he finally speaks. His heart thumps proudly in his chest and that is Quebec. It's always been Quebec.

“What happened?” he asks finally. And its neither English or French, but Dutch. Good enough, he thinks. Neutral. There’s a pause, a heave of breath being released from behind him.

“I don’t know exactly,” Johan says at last. “Bella… gets like that sometimes,” And Matt almost wants to turn around and look at him, but can’t bring himself too. “She gets headaches. Bad ones when the Walloons and the Flemish can’t get along.”

Matt turns over so his belly is flush to Johan’s, shoved his aching head against his chest. He's tired and split open, bare to the world in a way he’s rarely ever been in his life. Massive and isolated and cold means that people will stay away. Johan wrapped his arms around Matt, holds him loosely at the waist.

Matt can’t say a word. He knows the parallels. Dutch and French for Belgium. English and French for him. But he is infinitely larger than Belgium. He is plains and fields and prosperity and fortune. He should have so much space that the French and the English coexist in peace. Belgium is small, and closed-in and dense like one of those ancient tapestries the Europeans are so proud of, woven and re-woven again and again. But here he is, the second largest country on planet earth and there isn’t enough space to make peace.

“I forget how young you are sometimes,” Johan says at last. “That you have had so much less time to become a country than many of us have. Less time to smooth over the edges of old rivalries,”

And it's true. He feels very young, and very, very raw. He sniffles, pulls the blanket up over himself and Johan shifts, holding him tighter, like he knows what Matt's  feeling, like he knows that he wants the whole world to go away.

And maybe he does. Johan isn’t as old as some of Europe. Matt presses his forehead into the hollow of Johan’s collarbones. Warm and smooth and steady.

“Is Bella… is she ever one or the other?” he asks.

He feels Johan shake his head. “No. It’s much the same as it is for you. They fight, try to split her down the middle. But they can’t because she's only one woman. It’s hard for her to be both but she is. Same as you.”

“Does it ever get better?”

Johan snorts. “Does anything ever get any better in the old world?” He kisses Matt’s hair but Matt is quiet, the pathetic attempt at humour having fallen flat. He sighs. “No. It doesn’t get much better for her. But you’re the New World, not the old. If there’s anywhere luckier, we’ve yet to find it. You’ll make it through. Somehow.”

Matt clenches two fistfuls of Johan’s shirt, trying not to think about being split down the middle. _You are one people!_ _Two languages, two worlds! One people, one nation!_

For all four hundred years of loneliness, he has only ever been one man.

“You’ll be all right,” Johan reassures him. “I mean,” His hands lift to gesture at Matt’s body. “If someone had told me in 1627 that you’d have even lived to see the next century, I would have laughed.”

Matt remembers those days. Remembers being small and thin and clinging to the edge of a continent. He remembers how flimsy the wooden palisades of the forts. In the winter, the winds would blow right through every crack until they began to build in stone.

When he was a boy, the first settlers used to say you had to open a window or a door to let out the soul of the newly deceased. They stopped believing in that after the first winter drafts that could carry off a child’s breath as easily as it carried the sobs of its mother. Life had been so precarious and so precious. And so French. Everything about him that was delicate came from Francis. His nose, his hair, his first language, the danger to his unity. All of it came from Francis. But so too did his reasons for living.

“And now look at you,” Johan kissed Matt’s forehead. “You know, Canada would be known worldwide as the most beautiful country on earth if it were up to the Dutch,”

And there, that finally coaxes a smile out of him. He's still here, isn't he? He is here and it’ll take so much more than some Frenchmen with a chip on their shoulders to shatter him. He’d hold himself together if it killed him. He just hopes to God it won't.

“I love you, you know. As much as I’ve ever loved another of our kind,”

Matt nods. There it is again. He can’t move, paralysed by apprehension and his own dismal lack of bravery. What Johan must think of him right now. A man who flung himself into a hailstorm of machine gun fire utterly paralysed by emotional discomfort. A young man’s bravery. He’s always had a young man’s bravery. Old enough to be brave without thought for physical pain, but still ragged with the child’s fear of disapproval. Maybe Johan was right in calling him a child. Johan peppers kisses along his jaw and throat and collarbone, holds him like something that might take flight and there’s the familiar scratch of Matt’s stale day old stubble against his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” Matt blurts. And Johan stops.

“Why?” He asks, pulling away, looking at him hard.

“I don’t know,” Matt shakes his head, withdraws as far as he can without breaking their embrace. “For yesterday. For being a child,”

Johan stops. “You are many things, but you aren’t a child. I shouldn’t have called you that,”

“I was being an ass,” Matt admits quietly.

“You weren’t. You were only standing up for yourself.” Johan kisses him again. “And I think I’m supposed to be the one person you shouldn’t have to stand up to,”

He's right there. Of all the people Matthew should have snapped at over the years, it shouldn’t be him.

“You’re the one person I’m not supposed to be an ass too,” Matt says at last.

“You aren’t an ass unless someone deserves it,” Johan sits back, draws Matt with him so they face the sea together. “We’re supposed to be on the same team, no matter what. And I wasn’t being fair,”

“You weren’t… wrong though. I don’t know fuck all about running overseas territories. I’ve never had any,”

“True,” Johan muses. “But I shouldn’t have been angry with you for trying to help. That wasn’t right,”

“I’m sorry,” Matt says again, tucking his chin over Johan’s shoulder and staring at the water.

“Don’t be. I’m the one who should be apologizing. I forget… what I am to you,”

“And what is that?” He asks. “What exactly are you to me?”

“Safe harbour,” Johan says at last, squeezing his hand. His eyes are open wide, and earnest. “You paid for that in blood, Matthew. And that is something you should always have in me,”

He phrases it like what happens between them is a transaction. But his hand is warm and his eyes are honest and his meaning heavier than another would know. Matt did pay for this in blood. So much Canadian blood in Dutch fields and rivers and cities and forests. He’s paid for what is between them in shot soldiers and fallen airmen, but only with Johan’s consent and want. And it is want, so much want, that threads them together when Johan kisses him. Matt lifts him, kneels so they’re face to face. Is about to go for more when Johan gets up, turns on a record Matt half recognizes seeing before.

Burbling, gentle jazz fills the air. The sea breeze sweeps the curtains aside and under a night-full of stars, Johan takes him by the waist. Matt doesn’t feel very romantic, still sweaty and tender, but Johan doesn’t seem to care. He's soft, but not subtle, leading them in swaying little circles around the living room floor, inviting Matthew to follow along, but never pulling him.

_Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you_

_Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you_

_But in your dreams whatever they be_

_Dream a little dream of me._

Matt doesn’t have to dream anymore. What he has always needed, what he has always wanted? It's right in front of him. His lover. His best friend. The only soul on planet earth Matt can rely upon emotionally and politically without strings or conditions. The oasis in a lonely desert. A phone that will always be answered. A pair of ears that will always listen. A pair of hands that will always hold him. A pair of eyes that will always see him.

The sea is glass beyond the distance, as calm as Johan ever is and as peaceful as everyone thinks Matt should be. The song changes, something slower, a woman’s voice, higher this time.

They stand still, closer, bodies tightly bound by so much. Matt almost can’t stand it again. Can’t stand how close they are. But Johan is older, more patient. Johan slides of Matt’s glasses, undoes one button at time, fumbling as if his fingers are asleep. Johan fell on top of him, their bodies in accord, chest to chest, belly to belly.

They are men, when they are like this. Johan and Matthew, no blood and history and certainly no transaction. Matt has bought nothing, Johan has nothing to be sold. Their mouths seek out each other; Matt kisses his arms, his hands and his chest. Kissing until kissing is torture and their bodies grow restless and hot. Johan searches with warm hands and found an opening, yielding flesh. He's always found yielding flesh in Matthew.

Two fingers worked along his ass and inside him, loosening, toying. Matt is raw nerves in his hands and Johan knows how to play every note. He grabs his hair, turns round and pulled him closer. Johan entered, hot and slow and Matt moans, the long deep sound of satisfaction. There is the familiar rhythm. Push in, pull away. Heavy and impossibly slow. The hours and days of tides and pools and oceans.

Johan is a creature of a time where travel was numbered in weeks, not hours and it shows as he takes his sweet time with him. Matt shakes like he might come apart, legs quaking. In and out, in and out. He shudders against Johan and when he finally speeds up and Matt does fall apart like a ship smashed at the rivets against the waves of heat, Johan looks down, sweaty and pleased, glowing and tired.

Matt pulls them up, and they stumbled, naked and sweaty and sticky, to the bed. Johan holds them together, holds Matt together as his nation threatens to rip him apart at his hull. Safe harbour indeed.

He doesn't want to be the wind in someone's sails or the sea under someone's hull. He doesn't want to be the snarling dragon on someone's prow. He’s always admired the birds that flit and flutter and bring pleasure as they come and go but they are as changeful as the light. He wants to be the sea to someone's sky. He wants to be churning and furious when they are grey. He wants to be smooth and beautiful when they are calm. He wants to reflect their moon and stars and sun and make them all the brighter. Johan is the sea. Johan is the sea and he can be the sky.

He kisses Matt, turns over in the bed and assures him, makes him understand with every kiss along the hard arch of his lean impossibly strong New World body. Makes Matt know, deep in his bones, that his lives and his blood have bought Johan’s goodwill, his love, his friendship till the end of time. He sears it into his memory that Matt is worth so, so much more than a few days a year.  

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> And for once, dear reader, I think that is all I will leave you with for today. I hope you enjoyed!
> 
> And as always: I'm on tumblr here: https://historia-vitae-magistras.tumblr.com/
> 
> I post history and Hetalia and aesthetics.
> 
> Kudos, comments and critiques are life. Thank you for reading!


End file.
